These Vagabond Shoes
by dietplainlite
Summary: An heiress, a case, and a reunion with Molly Hooper. Sherlock Holmes is supposed to be lying low. He is dead, after all. But the City That Never Sleeps has other plans.
1. Angel of the Waters

**Author's Note:**

**I don't own Molly or Sherlock or any of the BBC Sherlock characters. I do lay claim to my original characters, as I think they're pretty nifty.**

**This fic was inspired by my feeling homesick for a town that isn't mine, but feels like home the second I put my feet on that hard concrete.**

"This angel. She's my favorite angel. I like them best when they're statuary. They commemorate death but they suggest a world without dying. They are made of the heaviest things on earth, stone and iron, they weigh tons but they're winged, they are engines and instruments of flight. This is the angel Bethesda." Tony Kushner—_Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika_

Sherlock Holmes sits on the rim of Bethesda Fountain on the kind of perfect October day that some would have you believe doesn't exist anymore in New York. It is remarkably quiet save for the music of the fountain behind him and, in the lower terrace, a lone busker (Julliard student, on scholarship, busks for money for food and the occasional CD, he will drop a fifty in her hat when he leaves) sings an aria from _La Boheme_. She has a lilting soprano that should keep her working steadily in smaller cities but will never garner her international acclaim.

He considers adding busking to his routine, imagines himself on a subway platform or park with his violin. He could kill countless hours of this blasted waiting doing that. Perhaps after he's explored Central Park in its entirety. He has explored about one fourth of it in detail, storing what is relevant and deleting what is not.

He has been in New York for two weeks, staying in the sublet apartment of a Nigerian student near 137th and Broadway. (He believes he's actually a sub sub leaser, but he doesn't care.) The neighborhood is gentrified enough that his pasty Englishness doesn't warrant a second glance among the pert blonde mums in yoga pants pushing $1500 strollers, but is still holding on tenaciously to its original character.

His progress has been halted by the news that Moriarty's network in the city has ties to the Mafia. He has been ordered to wait for more information as Mycroft explores how intricate those ties are (and if Moriarty is a just a string in the Mafioso web, or vice versa [either option complicating matters immensely, but the latter would be disastrous to the Holmes brothers' plans.]) Mycroft's progress has been painfully slow, as he has to use means that will alert neither the Mafia nor the CIA that he is interested.

So Sherlock waits, and has been advised by his brother to learn the city, to learn the people in the city, in preparation for the very real prospect that he will have to pose as a native. In service of that, he has spent the past two weeks rambling about the city day and night, via cab, subway, bus and by foot, only returning occasionally to his tiny walk up to sleep for a few hours. He has mainly kept to Manhattan, but has meandered to the other four boroughs on occasion. His unlimited monthly Metro Card is almost worn out from swiping, and he is already learning the best directions to give the cab drivers, though he sometimes lets them take him on their meandering, fare hiking routes just to see new areas of the city. He will often disappoint the cab drivers by asking to stop well before the ride is over when he spies something of interest. Sometimes it is something like a tiny artisan bagel shop, other times a landmark like the Natural History Museum (he spent an entire afternoon in the gem room.)

In one hand he holds a cup of tea, from one of two places in the city where he has found a decent cup of tea. This one is on Central Park West. He prefers the other one, run by a former Londoner, but being in the West Village it was a bit impractical.

There is another cup of tea sitting beside him, waiting for a small, steady hand to cradle it and a really not too small set of lips to sip it. Molly Hooper is in town for a conference. She is presenting a paper, in fact. It's hard to imagine her doing such a thing (and for some reason he imagines her presenting the paper in her lab coat) even after seeing firsthand how remarkably strong she really is. He has not seen her since the day of his death, and the dream like images of her calm confidence have been again eclipsed by the more numerous images of her nervousness in his presence. He wonders how she'll be today. He admits to choosing this meeting place because he thinks she'll like it, and because it is one of his favorite spots in the park so far. He is actually a bit nervous thinking about whether she'll appreciate the fountain, and has a vague idea that he'd like to take her to the zoo.

He pushes this thought aside as spots her tiny form walking through the lower terrace. She turns her head to the opera singer for just a moment before she spots him and takes off running. He sets down his cup and stands up quickly, realizing he should probably go to her lest her momentum launch them both into the fountain upon meeting.

Her momentum when she reaches him and wraps her arms around him is enough to knock a bit of the wind out of him, but he does remain standing. She squeezes him tightly and he tentatively places his hands on her shoulders. She pulls away a bit and looks up at him, beaming.

"I'm sorry. I just, I can't believe it's actually you. Until I saw you I thought it had to be some mistake or a joke. At the last second I even thought it might be a trap. But it's you." She hugs him again, throwing her arms around his neck, and this time he returns it, wrapping his arms around her and burying his nose in her hair (She'd been wearing a hat but it had fallen off while she was running) his sense memory immediately reveling in the familiar fragrance. He chuckles when it occurs to him that the entire scene has been set to music, and that to an onlooker it might seem like a bit from a romantic movie. It also occurs to him that this is the first time anyone has hugged him in months, and that she was the last one to do it, on the day he died.


	2. Subterranean Homesick Blues

Molly pulls away again and gives him a closer look. She reaches up and pushes his hat back on his head a bit.

"Sherlock, you're ginger!"

"Very astute, Molly," he says. He pulls his cap back over his hair and sits down on the fountain's rim again.. He gestures for her to join him and hands her the tea.

"Oh this is good. I haven't had a decent cuppa since I got here. They do coffee beautifully, though."

"You've only been in town one day."

"Long enough."

They sit in silence for a while as the Terrace becomes more populated. Tourists, nannies with their charges, students, vagrants, a guy on a unicycle. In moments like these he can briefly pretend that the bustling crowds are London crowds. This city is the closest he's come to feeling at all at home, but it remains foreign and just out of reach.

"How long are you in town?"

"Not sure really, at least a month."

He looks at her sharply. She has tears in her eyes.

""Molly?"

She looks away and shakes her head, starts rummaging in her bag for a tissue.

"Molly, tell me what's wrong."

She looks at him, and he is shocked to see that there is as much anger as sadness in her eyes.

"It was just so exhausting. The lying. To their faces, Sherlock. I would go round to see Mrs. Hudson for a while to keep her company, but I just couldn't keep it up. I avoided John altogether. I know he thinks it's because I blame him for your death somehow. But the worst is Greg. I can't avoid him, not since he's been reinstated. The bodies come in and he sometimes comes in to look at them and he's got the look of a dad who couldn't save his son. And one day after he'd gone I put the body we were looking at away, cleaned out my desk and my locker and told my boss I was going on sabbatical. Immediately. I already had this conference booked and up until that moment I thought a few days away would be all I needed. But I just couldn't look at Greg and lie to him again. I was saving for a down payment on a house but that just doesn't seem important anymore so I'm doing the thing all the white girls do in the books and romantic comedies and wandering around until I figure it out." She laughs at this bit of self deprecation and blows her nose.

"Where are you staying?"

"I'm subletting a studio in the Meatpacking District. It's a friend from uni's place. She's leaving for some heavy duty yoga retreat. I move in Monday."

"And until then, the Marriott in Times Square."

"Don't give me those judgy eyes, Sherlock Holmes. It's where the conference is and I got a deal."

"Who's keeping that cat while you're away?"

"That cat is named Toby, and do not pretend that you don't adore him. He's actually staying with Mrs. Hudson. She likes cats and said she'd like the company."

Sherlock nods. He has always wondered by Mrs. Hudson didn't keep a cat. She was certainly the type.

Molly wipes her eyes and gestures to the fountain behind them. "So, tell me about this. I didn't have a chance to look it up."

He rattles off the information from his guidebook. "We're in Bethesda Terrace, and this statue is called Angel of the Waters. It depicts an angel blessing the pool of Bethesda, giving it healing powers. Only statue in the park that is commissioned. The sculptor was a woman, the first one in New York to be given a public art commission in the city. The whole Terrace went through a period of disrepair in the sixties, when it was mostly used by junkies and their dealers."

Molly takes a camera from her bag and snaps a photo of the statue from where they sit, an upward angle that puts the statue in silhouette against the sky, her wings spread.

After she takes the photo, the camera makes a sound he hasn't heard in years: The whir of film advancing.

"Is that a 35mm camera?"

"Yes. I want to mostly use real film. I was looking at some old vacation photos before I left, and I like how they're imperfect and the colors are so warm and they're not always in focus."

"You know that you can add all of that later, with a computer, and still get the exact shot you want."

"What's the fun in that? I decided that surprises are better than perfect shots."

"But that camera looks like a toy. Are you sure it even works?"

"It basically _is_ a toy, it was mine when I was in primary. And yes, I tested it out before I left."

She digs in her bag again and produces an envelope of snapshots. She hands them to Sherlock. He expects to rifle through them quickly, but he is mesmerized after the first one. They are shots of London. A few touristy ones, but mostly just shots around Baker Street and around Bart's. Some have streaks down them from where light had leaked into the camera. Some aren't fully exposed or are partial double exposures because the film hadn't advanced completely. They all have the ultra-saturated color that he associates with childhood photos, despite the fact that she had used premium film and paper. A lump forms in his throat. He gets to the final one. It is the sidewalk in front of Bart's. The place where he landed. There are flowers and candles, and dozens of flyers and handwritten signs that say one of two phrases. "I Believe In Sherlock Holmes" or "Moriarty was Real."

He swallows hard and hands the stack of photos back.

"No, I got two sets. These are for you. I took them after I got your message."

"Thank you," he says. He replaces them in the envelope and tucks it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

"And look here," she says.

She gets out her phone and shows him the screen, scrolling through dozens more instances of these same phrases, in many different parts of London. Some are just scrawled quickly, others are pure art. He recognizes one piece that is undeniably the work of Raz, and it appears to be on the front wall of New Scotland Yard. That cheeky bastard.

"Did Mycroft not tell you about any of this?"

"No," he says. "And I try not to ask. About anything."


	3. The Diner On the Corner

They sit in companionable silence and she watches him watch the crowd. He is different. It isn't just the hair, though that was a shocking change. In addition to having dyed it red, he's cut it shorter and grown out his sideburns. The color suits him beautifully. It makes his eyes look more green than blue and brings out a soft flush in his cheeks.

He's dressed shabbier than he did in London, though she can tell the individual things he wears are expensive and tailored for him. He's wearing dark jeans with a thin turn up, a grey blazer with a light blue hooded shirt underneath, and a navy military style cap. He's lost weight. He looks about twenty five.

His eyes scan the crowd relentlessly, as always, but there is a heaviness to his eyes that wasn't there before. He was always a serious man but he'd never had so much gravity. And there had always been something childlike even in his glee about darker things. His face reminds her of a friend from school who had gone off in the first wave of kids fighting in Iraq. How his face had looked when he'd come home for the first time.

He finishes off his tea and stands up. "We need to get out of the park. I need a cigarette." He starts striding back toward the lower Terrace. He is putting a fifty dollar bill in the opera singer's hat by the time she shoulders her bag, puts her hat on and catches up to him.

"Why do we have to leave the park for you to have a cigarette?"

"You can't smoke in Central Park."

"You-what?"

"Smoking is prohibited in Central Park."

"But it's _outside_."

"I don't make the rules. I just grudgingly abide by them as police attention is low on my list of fun activities."

"Wait, you're smoking again?"

"Glad you've caught up."

"Sherlock," she said, touching his arm to stop him. She had forgotten how hard it is to keep up with him when he's walking. His strides are so long. She doesn't know how John ever kept up.

"Are we going to talk about how I was doing so well? Be grateful. There are a lot of other things I can find without having to leave my building."

"Sherlock don't do that."

"Do what?"

"You're basically saying to me 'at least it's not a needle' and that's not fair."

"It may not be fair, but it's true." He starts walking again, certain of where he's going, of course.

"Okay. I won't bother you about them. I know it's been hard," she says, thinking immediately what a trite thing that is to say. The noise of the Terrace fades away as they go down a path that gives the illusion of being in the middle of a forest. Other than the occasional jogger, they are alone.

They walk in silence.

Within ten minutes the city noise invades again and they walk out of the park at 5th Avenue and 79th Street. He lights up as soon as they hit the pavement and walks straight up 79th.

"Where are we going?"

"Lexington and 83rd. I want a milkshake. We should be at our destination by the time I finish this."

For his part he does slow down a little bit. He doesn't match her pace, but it does allow her to walk and talk without gasping for breath. She's not sure if it's to accomodate her or so that he can savor his cigarette.

He turns them left on Lexington, steering her with a touch to the elbow. She loses him in the crowd for a moment but he comes back for her, taking her hand to prevent another separation. _So this is what this feels like._ She knows it's nothing more than a practical gesture for him, but the realness of it, this further evidence that he is really alive (she'd doubted it more than once in the three months since she signed his death certificate) is enough to make her eyes sting again. She blinks rapidly and shakes her head.

When they get to 83rd he stops in front of a corner store and gets rid of his cigarette end. The building's sign simply says Luncheonette. Over the door, it reads Soda Candy. They go in, and Molly smiles. It's straight out of a 1950s movie. It hasn't been decorated to look that way; it just still_ is_ that way. The diner is long and narrow, with a counter on one side and a row of booths crammed along the wall. Everything is red and green and wood tone and chrome and there are dozens of signed photos of celebrities on the wall. It's bustling with an early lunch crowd, but they find two stools at the counter.

When their waitress brings their menus, Sherlock gives her his best "normal person" smile and says they'll need a couple of minutes.

"Don't bother with the menu unless you're really hungry. I suggest a milkshake or a malt."

"Sherlock, these milkshakes are eight dollars."

"The exchange rate is in your favor, and they're delicious."

"Okay, I'll trust you." When the waitress returns Molly orders a chocolate malt and Sherlock a strawberry milkshake. He sits fiddling with the salt and pepper shakers while she watches their shakes being made. Suddenly he spins on his stool to face her.

"What did you mean, about Lestrade?"

"What?"

"You said that he looks like a father who couldn't save his son. What did you mean?"

"Sherlock, you have to know what you meant to him. Even you have to know."

"I was useful to him, yes. Indispensable actually."

She can't say anything at first. How can this brilliant man be so bloody stupid?

"Sherlock, he loves you. You're not just useful to him. He-he _loves_ you. And he's always thought that you have so much potential, not just with your mind, but as a person. And he thinks he failed you."

"He was just doing his job. They all were. They're good cops and Moriarty counted on that."

And what is there to say, after that?

Their shakes come in enormous glasses along with the stainless steel mixing cups, which hold what wouldn't fit in the glasses. Molly takes a sip of her malt. It is, indeed, delicious.

"I don't know if it's worth 8 dollars but it's pretty fucking good." He shrugs, not getting the reference, and offers her a sip of his. "That one might be worth 8 dollars," she says.

They finish their shakes, and Molly orders coffee to warm herself up. The lunch crowd has thinned out and they're left with only the sound of a lone burger being cooked on the griddle, and Richie Valens on the jukebox.

They part outside the restaurant. He lets her hug him again before lighting another cigarette.

"You know where to find me," she says, as she backs away a few steps.

"Yes," he says. "I'll see you later, Molly."

She is waiting on the subway platform before she realizes that she doesn't know where to find him.

**A/N If you're wondering, the diner on the corner of Lex and 83rd is real, and the milkshakes are delicious. It's called Lexington Candy Shop or Lexington Luncheonette.** **It's been open since 1925 and is one of the oldest remaining lunch counters in New York. **


	4. Plus ça change

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole… Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much _older_ or anything. It wouldn't be that exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or that kid that was your partner in line last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way – I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it." _The Catcher in the Rye_—J.D. Salinger

Two days after meeting with Sherlock, Molly is staring into the frankly enormous fridge of her sublet flat, wondering how in the world she is supposed to fill it. Is she supposed to fill it? Or is it cool to just have a few apples and some bottled water in there because you eat out all the time. She can't afford to eat out all the time so she will have to go shopping.

But really, you could fit at least two corpses in this thing, standing up. Four if you put them in the fetal position. And that wasn't counting the freezer drawer.

She laughs at her joke and then sighs, thinking that the only other person she knows who might appreciate it is lost somewhere in that jungle of eight million people. If he is in Manhattan he cannot be more than thirteen miles away from her. Less considering she's three miles from the southernmost tip of the island. But he could have gone by now, and all she would have to show for their meeting is a sugar crash and lungs full of secondhand smoke.

But that isn't really true, is it?

She'd had him to herself for a little over an hour. Or as much as anyone can ever have him. She doesn't think he ever fully leaves that head of his. The people around him are never more than tabs open in the browser while he runs complex operations in the background.

And as much as he'd been different, she had been different around him. She had been able to look him in the eye and meet him as an equal. She hadn't allowed him to be dismissive. She had challenged him. After all, he was the one who had asked to see her. That night in the lab, when he had confessed that the needed her had been the beginning in the shift in their dynamic. The three months she spent without him had strengthened it. And there was that whole saving his life thing.

Of course, there was still that achy fluttering in her chest, the knot in her belly and the not so fluttery ache in her groin. Her physical response to him has always been so intense that sometimes she's afraid he can smell it on her. She had been foolish enough to think that being away from him for three months would lessen that intensity. But sitting next to him, watching his long slender fingers hold his cigarette, his mouth around his straw, hearing his voice again, its timbre raising the hair on her arms, made her very palms ache with need.

She closes the fridge's double doors and leans her forehead against its cool metal surface.

"Please, just let me hear from you one more time."

She opens the refrigerator again. "What do I fill you with?" she says to no one.

She shuts it again.

"Fuck it," she says. She opens her laptop and logs into Seamless.

An hour later she is shoving lo mein into her face while watching a reality show about a hair salon in New Jersey when the buzzer rings. She ignores it at first. She's only been here a day, but it's gone off several times. It was always either someone pressing the wrong apartment, or a friend of Emma (not so great a friend if she didn't tell them she was leaving) or someone needing to get in because they don't have their front door key.

It keeps ringing this time, so she pauses the show and goes to the intercom, carton of takeaway still in hand.

"Yes, what is it?"

"A month may seem like a long time, but it will go by all too quickly. I don't think you're going to find yourself by holing up in your flat watching telly."

"Sherlock?"

"Who else would it be? Buzz me in."

Molly presses the buzzer and looks around. Of course the place is clean. It was spotless when she moved in and she only brought one suitcase. She, however, somehow never managed to change out of her pyjamas today.

"Whatever," she mutters. She unlocks the various locks on the door and cracks it, then sits back down on the sofa with her food. She should be ecstatic that her wish has been granted, but instead she is irritated. Because of course he would just show up, and of course he would find her moping in her pyjamas at three in the afternoon.

He walks in a few minutes later. "Oh it's worse than I thought," he says, after surveying the scene.

"What?" she says, not taking her eyes off the telly though she's dying, absolutely dying to look at him and what he's wearing today and how his hair looks. "Flat not good enough?"

"No, the flat is extraordinary," he says, looking out the picture window with its view of the Empire State Building. "I knew you'd be here, doing basically the same thing you'd be doing in London. I just thought you'd at least have showered."

She almost throws the carton of food at him, but decides she doesn't want to risk getting anything on the rug or the walls. She wouldn't have minded ruining that sage green plaid shirt that he looks absolutely brilliant in, however. He would roll the sleeves up just so, wouldn't he?

"What do you want, then?"

"I'm bored—"

"Of course, why else track me down?"

"As I was saying, I'm bored, and I thought you might need a bit of gentle nudge to get you to actually explore this city you're paying so much to live in."

"Well, what if I'm just exhausted from all the exploring I did yesterday?"

He raised an eyebrow.

"Okay. I'm just a little—intimidated."

"Molly, you live in a city almost exactly this size."

"I know, but I know it, and it's home. Everything is so fast here. Yesterday it was like I woke up, brought my things here, went to lunch with Emma before she left for the airport and then the next thing I knew it was midnight."

"Go shower and change. I'll wait." He sits on the sofa and picks up the remote, but doesn't change the telly.

"Where are you taking me?"

"Somewhere you should have already been."

Half an hour later they're crammed inside an uptown subway car. Molly is pressed against Sherlock, her nose practically in his chest. She's just a bit too short to hold onto the bars comfortably, so he holds the bar with one arm and has the other around her waist to steady her. Not that it would really be possible for her to fall with the car so crowded, but she isn't complaining.

She's also not complaining about the appraising and appreciative looks that Sherlock is getting from several people in the car. Nor is she complaining about the downright envious looks that a few are giving her. _So this is what this feels like_.

"So how do you afford it?" he asks.

"What?"

"That flat. It's quite small but in a good location. Prime view, new building."

"Oh, well, my friend. I've known her for ages and I helped her out a lot in school. Gave me a friend discount I suppose. Plus, well, she doesn't pay the rent, her ex-husband does."

"I thought alimony was rare these days?"

"She had a really good attorney, and he was a cheater. You probably figured all that out just looking at the flat, though."

"Only that she hasn't lived there long and is newly single."

"Are you losing your touch?"

"No, I was mostly focused on you."

"Oh." She knows this is not necessarily a good thing and steels herself for the upcoming litany of her faults, but they are at their stop. She's grateful to avoid his deductions (and to get off this damned train which never runs express and is one of the few downsides to her location) but sad to remove herself from such close proximity.

They emerge near 81st street and he leads her around to the main entrance of the American Museum of Natural History. He pays for their admission (the suggested donation and a little extra even though the museum closes in an hour) and she follows him through the massive grand hall and into a dimly lit hall full of dioramas of animals in their natural habitats. He stops and lets her lead, hands behind his back, watching her as she goes to each display. She is fascinated. The taxidermied animals are in beautiful condition and posed as if they were photographed by a naturalist. They are all native to North America, so there are many she has only seen in movies and photos, such as buffalo and elk. She gets chills pondering the size of the buffalo and picturing what the herds must have looked like.

She gets as close to the glass as she can, taking in every detail of fur and hoof and horn and the stunning landscape paintings that serve as backgrounds. The displays are like life sized versions of the Viewfinder slides she spent hours staring at as a child.

There are a lot of children in the hall, and their laughter echoes off of the walls and high ceiling. It is a comforting sound, reminding her of school field trips. She turns away from the exhibits and watches other people look at the exhibits, animated silhouettes against the bright serenity of the scenes behind the glass.

When she gets to the last one, he asks her quietly if she'd like to see anything else. The announcement had just gone overhead that the museum would close in fifteen minutes.

"No, not today. This is enough."

"Good," he says "And now that you're out, there's no sense trekking all the way back downtown yet. Would you like to see my flat?"

"Oh," she says. She still feels slightly dreamy and it takes her a moment to comprehend. "Sure. You're in Harlem, right?"

"Yes. And we're taking a taxi."


End file.
